Hello folks, I'm Bob Schrupp physical therapist, Brad Heineck physical therapist. Together we are the most famous physical therapists on the internet, in our opinion of course Bob.
Anyway today Brad we're going to talk about 10 best TMJ exercises, 9
9? 9! What did you change it?
Well, that's right. Well plus a bonus. Okay. Just keep watching you'll see.
Exercises to stop pain and
By the way, a lot of people probably don't know what TMJ is
They just feel that it's your jaw, painful locking etc., but no they don't know what the words TMJ
what it stands for
Is it the mouth jaw?
Well
Temperomandibular joint
Okay
Everyone has TMJ, everyone has a temporal mandibular joint, two of them, we'll be able to see it on here really well
Yeah, we beheaded Napoleon
All right so right here is
Now this is exactly what it looks like with the exception you don't have a spring in your mouth like that
But the joint it's kind of a really odd looking joint compared to a lot of joints
It's not like an elbow or a finger joint
And there's the muscle configuration in here you got a very strong jaw muscle to close your jaw,
There's muscles up in here too, all attached into the jaw, it gets kind of complicated, but anyways that is your TMJ
joint and
it's amazing the symptoms that that joint can cause
You can get a lot of pain and a lot of, they result in headaches, Oh, yeah, get pain in the ear, you get headaches
neck pain
clicking and locking the joint. It's not a pleasant thing. I had it once.
Oh, you did? Yeah, just on one side, and it was very uncomfortable, and it wasn't fun
And I think what I got it from, I was chewing on my front left
and that's one of the things you're not supposed to do
I know they're even
concerned about when you go to the dentist and you have your jaw open really wide for a long period of time,
one of the problems that can result in
You ever get it where they got things wedged in there and they're doing a crown or something like that?
Yeah, it's not fun, the dentist isn't fun for a lot of reasons, and that's just one of them.
Well first Brad, if you are new to our channel, please take a second to subscribe to us
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psychologist, okay here we go American Academy of Family Physicians is where we got these from
So you know it's good, so you're gonna
do these daily okay and some of these exercises up to six times per day
But the first one, these are specific and the whole idea Bob is to get the jaw muscles to relax
they're tightened up on you, and regain the range of motion. Let the TMJ joint go in where it's supposed to and
Things will work on it. Its hyper irritable because
the muscles are working overtime, working all the time, you got to get them to relax
So take the tip of your tongue and put it right behind your two front teeth right on the gum right next where the teeth meet
the gum
Yeah, that's a the standard relaxed position for the jaw, and then you're just gonna open and close
Go ahead, open and close your mouth
Slowly, okay
And you're not gonna open up as wide as you can, just a very comfortable range
Okay, if you get so far and it gets painful, you stop and just go in that pain-free
How many of these are we doing? We can do up to ten of these
And then number two they call this the goldfish exercise
I'm gonna do a half
opening on this
Now this one instead of putting the tip your tongue right behind your teeth you put your tongue on the roof of your mouth
Oh really, okay. Okay? So you got it there
It's hard for me to talk to you and do it at the same time, and this one: six repetitions. You're gonna open your jaw half way
Just half way, so it does look like a goldfish. Yeah, right yeah then
You do that six times and this one six times per day
the next two are six repetitions
six times per day, kind of even it out throughout the day. The first one how often do you do the relaxed jaw?
That one? Yeah. That one ten times?
Yeah, if you have good success with it
Once a day, but you could do it more than that. I think this is just like
exercises that we do for therapy for the other parts of the body, sure
Depends how much you talk I suppose
The next one, same thing, but instead of going half opening you're gonna go open it up, and if you can without pain
So tongue on the roof of the mouth and
Open it as wide as you can, as long as it's not painful, go up to the pain
Well the tongue is gonna limit you, in how far you can go
But you have to have the tongue in there to get the right mechanics
I'm glad I brushed my teeth today.
Wow okay
Your wife must love you
Okay chin tucks
Because posture is very important with TMJ, so when you do these
Make sure you got your shoulders back, actually with all these it's a good idea to get those shoulders back
Pay attention to your posture and your chin tucks like this. It's interesting how much this plays a role in your
chewing and you can just try this, try chewing like this
All slouched
And it's just even your whole throat and everything doesn't work like it should
So the chin tucks are really a good one to do not only like Brad said for your neck and posture
It's really important for the TMJ. Yep. So are you gonna do this one? You know
They're recommending holding it three seconds, which Ithink I'm fine with that
I'm fine with that too
The American Academy of Family Physicians, we agree, we concur, ok next one
And then I would do that one throughout the day
I think you could do that, that one's always good to do,
Now this one resisted opening the mouth, okay?
So you're gonna put your thumb or whatever you want your fingers underneath your chin
And you're gonna get off a resistance and open, do you got your tongue behind them? No,
And it's going to take three to six seconds to go through the range of motion so
You can do that five to ten times, depending on how it feels
I think a lot of this is like anything you have to see how your body
responds to these. A lot of times the muscles, if you can get them to
really contract hard, then they relax easier, it's contract relaxed, all these concepts are the same
From the body to the jaw and then grab ahold of your chin. Okay, open it up, a comfortable opening and
close with resistance. Yeah, you got to get a hold of that chin,
And again same amount of time, three to six seconds of resisted
So Jay Leno wouldn't have no trouble with this
I hope our audience isn't so young that they don't even know what that means, or Donna Fargo
She was a country singer back in the seventies. I think I remember her
Good singer. She had a big chin? I think so yeah. As a kid we used to make fun of it.
I hope she's not watching.
Sorry, Donna. Yeah, good voice though. So yeah a very pretty woman. Okay tongue touching the top of the mouth.
Now this is the same as the first one, but we just did the fingertip or the tongue top of the teeth
And now we're doing tongue and the roof of the mouth, and then opening it again, mm-hmm opening close slowly
This is one you want to be relaxed, just let that open, always good posture too throughout all these, good reminder Bob
I should give you a slap right there in the chest
But we don't get violent in here. You could walk into this
Okay now
This one's kind of fun for me
Get some tongue depressors, or if you don't you can get some
popsicle sticks, about a quarter of an inch thick, so I've got three tongue depressors stacked on top of each other
Just something that's smooth, about a quarter inch thick, and then you know it's clean, so you don't
infect your mouth with anything, and you put it in here
And then you just slide your jaw right to left, just gently letting your lower teeth slide across
the sticks okay? How you doing Bob?
It's looking good
And then as it gets more comfortable back and forth you add
another stick. Oh just another one? Yeah, well whatever is comfortable.
Obviously you're not going to go up to three inches and have your mouth wider than this
But to a reasonable functional mouth you make it up to half, so I think what's nice about this is it
provides a guide which allows you to relax
You can stay relaxed with the sticks in the mouth. You know you don't want to bite it, but you have to be touching it
Just so it slides, and then the next one is the same thing, but you're gonna go forward and back.
So really all we're doing on all these
exercises is working all the TMJ muscles in all different directions, and trying to do it in a relaxed fashion
So that the mechanics of the jaw become normal, with good range of motion
Number ten, oh you're gonna make one of those? Yeah.
The number ten one is if you go to our video on this for the massage
Sure right, yeah
We've had a lot of good success with people having problems because if those muscles are that tight as you're having problems with these and
it's just not working well
then you got to get in there and do a manual massage
on those teeth, and we go through all that, on how to massage those muscles
And people have had really good success
Oh, yeah, we get a lot of positive comments with that. We used to make these as kids, you remember these? I do Bob.
They explode like this
and I learned how to do them even with four of them I
Invented this so you can do with four, so if this is like your children have TMJ and you have these
popsicle or these tongue depressors you get a bunch from the doctor then you can have them play with this afterwards,
Yep see so you can make it with four even, I never did the four one. Yeah, I invented it
I did! Oh really. And then you know okay, that's gonna blow it up. We've digressed severely
Good luck with that jaw joint, thanks for watching.